


Cathedral of Sleep

by dyad (johnnycake)



Series: Switchblades and Leather [41]
Category: The Outsiders (1983), The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: C-PTSD, CSA, Child Abuse, Implied Sexual Abuse, M/M, Physical Abuse, Sexual Abuse, Trauma, bisexual dallas winston, complex PTSD, disordered eating implied, implied rape, jally, self harm implied, trans johnny cade
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-26 12:40:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18717280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnnycake/pseuds/dyad
Summary: Johnny's life is one trauma after another. But the body and the mind can only take so much more before it breaks.





	1. Blackness/Belt Slices

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Breathing Underwater](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10971660) by [LylaMackenzie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LylaMackenzie/pseuds/LylaMackenzie). 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something horrific happens in Tulsa pretty often, but tonight it's something out of a horror movie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow i ain't remixed a fic in a while, but i read this one and i...i fuckin' had to y'all. it was so good. i had to. as always pls read the original, it deserves the attention. 
> 
> also i recognize that fic is 26 chapters long and no i won't be remixin' the whole thing. i am gonna be remixin' about 5-6 chapters of it and then the rest is gonna be my own idea. idk how long this is gonna be or anythin', but i hope y'all like it!!

It happened almost every night he dared to come home.

It didn’t matter how late it was. Nor how early. It didn’t matter how drunk the man was and it didn’t matter how quietly the boy moved about the house. It didn’t matter if he’d spent the whole day out of the house and snuck back into his room through his open window that night after the lights were out and everyone else in the neighborhood had long since gone to bed.

It didn’t matter.

It never mattered.

Nothing mattered.

Because no matter how careful or quiet or long he was gone, the minute he came back, it always happened again. Almost as though the man was connected to him through some sort of sixth sense – a thought that made the boy’s stomach turn so violently and his hands shake so bad that no amount of cigarettes or reassurances or desperately happy thoughts could still them.

And tonight was no exception.

As he did every night, he wondered why he bothered to come home at all when he knew what would happen when he did.

The small voice in his head had many answers to this question.

_You need fresh clothes sometime._

_You can’t always sleep in the lot. Sometimes it just too cold._

_You can’t always bother the Curtis’s. They got enough going on._

_Sometimes it’s just nice to sleep in a bed._

_Yes, but at what cost?_ he thought in reply now.

He lay in bed now, shaking, the door to his bedroom open, the silhouette of the man in the door. He couldn’t see his face, the hallway light and the darkness of the room working together to make his expression unknowable until it was too late.

But even the light and the dark couldn’t hide the smell of alcohol.

The boy wasn’t sure anymore if the stench was from a night of drinking, the bottle in the man’s hand, or just the smell of the house itself.

Maybe it was all three.

The man stepped into the room and closed the door, shutting out all of the light and hope in the world as the door latch clicked into place.

The already small boy tried to make himself smaller.

Smaller meant less noticeable. Smaller meant less to hurt.

But he had long since learned that by now it was far too late for smaller to also mean invisible.

He closed his eyes tight and prayed that maybe tonight the man wouldn’t do anything. That maybe tonight he would just stare at him and touch himself and then leave.

Sometimes that was all he did.

He felt the mattress sink with the man’s weight.

Tonight wasn’t going to be one of those nights.

He didn’t open his eyes as he heard the small clinking sound of the man taking off his belt. He didn’t open his eyes when he felt the man’s hot breathe on his skin. He didn’t open his eyes when he heard the man’s pants drop to the ground over the edge of the mattress as he kicked them off.

Then he felt the man’s hand on his skin and his eyes snapped open.

It was as if some sort of bomb had gone off inside him, as if that was all he had been waiting for. Suddenly, he was no longer frozen. He was very much awake. Very much present. He had been lying on his side, but now he flipped over onto his back. The man was hovering above him, ready to hurt him, ready to use him, ready to do things that would make his roiling stomach overflow with bile and whatever food he’d managed to get that day.

He didn’t want it to happen.

Not again.

He began to hit the man, punch him, scream, claw, kick, fight back.

 _No! h_ is mind screamed when he saw the man’s underwear was gone already too. _No! No! No! Not tonight! Not tonight! Not tonight!_

The man didn’t tolerate this for long. He caught the boy’s wrists easily in one hand and held them to one side, his grip crushing the small bones against each other and making the boy gasp in pain. He leaned down over the boy and hissed in his face, the smell of alcohol so strong now the boy had to fight not to cough or vomit as the man spoke, “You should know better by now, bitch.”

In a flash, the man had the belt in his hand again, raising it above his head as he towered over the boy, lying prone on the bed. The boy knew what was to come and curled back up into a ball on his side, wrapping his arms around his middle pulling his legs up. But the man was smarter than him. If he was going to protect one part of himself, the man would just focus on the parts he couldn’t.

The belt flew through the air, moving so fast it whistled as it came down.

The boy shut his eyes again, as tight as they would go.

The buckle cracked sickeningly against the skin of the boy’s back, ripping him open, leaving a slowly growing spot of red on the white t-shirt he wore.

The boy sucked in sharp breath, the pain that he should’ve been numb to by now startling him.

The belt flew through the air again and again, the buckle ripping open new wounds with every hit. His back took the majority of the torment, but his legs caught some of it, his arms caught more. A few times it his face, cutting open his already scarred cheeks. He reached up to cover his face, but all that achieved was his hands getting cut up too.

Eventually the man tired of using the belt and, though the boy fought against him, pulled the boy out of the bed, throwing him to the floor, using his fists and feet to damage the boy even more. The wounds that had been opened by the belt ruptured. More blood poured out of the boy, leaving light stains on the carpet that he knew he would be blamed for later. More than once the man’s blows landed on the boy’s head and, vaguely, he realized that he must by now have a concussion. It wouldn’t be his first one, he knew, and probably not his last either.

 _Stupid,_ a nasty voice hissed in his mind. _Stupid, stupid, stupid. This is what you get for fighting back. You know better than that._

And in the end, it accomplished nothing except postponing what the man had originally come into the boy’s room to do to begin with.

Eventually he dropped his hands, he stopped kicking him. He grabbed the boy’s wrists and held them above his head with one hand. He pulled away the boy’s underwear with the other and told the boy gruffly to shut up when he cried out in pain.

The boy’s thighs were stained with blood too by the time the man finished.

The man stood, pulling on his underwear, his pants, his belt, breathing heavily.

“Shut the fuck up and keep your hands to yourself and it won’t be so bad,” he said.

And then he left.

The boy was left on the floor, shaking, tears running out of his eyes down the sides of his face to the bloodstained carpet. For a long time, he couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything except lie on the ground, staring at the ceiling, his vision hazy, struggling to keep from breaking down into full blown sobs that he knew would break him in half.

Later he would never be sure how long he laid there on the ground, staring at the ceiling, shaking, doing everything he could to keep the sobs rising in his chest from breaking through. It felt like hours, but it could’ve been minutes.

Eventually, he managed to stand. He managed to pull up in his underwear. And he managed to climb out his window. He ran through his backyard, not wearing anything except his bloodstained clothes. It was cold out, but he hardly noticed the cold. He hardly noticed the way the glass from old bottles on the street and sharp rocks in his backyard cut up his feet as he staggered through the world, unsure of where he was going until he ended up in the vacant lot.

He made it to the edge of the ripped out car seat and the makeshift fire pit before his knees buckled and the ground rushed up to meet him. His already damaged head cracked hard against the ground and he saw flashes of lights before the world was snatched away into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wanted this to be longer, but i'm still pretty happy with how it turned out!!


	2. Shredded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dally finds Johnny the night after the incident at the lot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took me a little longer than i wanted it to to finish, but i'm happy with how it turned out!! i decidedta do two chapters of this before writin' the next vulnera martyr chapter cause two chapters of this is still only about half of one chapter of that

It was uncommon for Dallas Winston to be out of the house before noon. He skipped school so often and came in late so much more than that, that it was rare for anyone attending to see him before lunch and when the school year was over and out for the summer, the odds of seeing him before two or three in the afternoon became even more unlikely.

This didn’t mean that he wasn’t up before noon.

What no one knew was that, more often than not, Dallas was up by nine in the morning. He would wake up slowly, chain smoking the cigarettes he kept on his nightstand, staring at the ceiling, thinking about things he didn’t really want to think about at all. His window was open no matter the weather, allowing whatever feeble breeze blew by to snatch away the smoke into nothingness.

Once he was awake, he’d take a shower, letting the warm water run over him, standing beneath it for as long as he dared if his father was home, standing beneath it for as long as he _wanted_ if he was home alone, before finally stepping out and drying himself off.

He never looked in the mirror. Not once.

Not when he dried his hair, not when he brushed his teeth.

Looking in the mirror never helped anything.

After that he’d get dressed, he’d decide what to do and he’d leave the house.

Most of the time, he had a destination in mind and it was always the same.

Find Johnny. And spend as much of the day with him as he possibly.

This morning wasn’t any different. His father was home, but he was gone right now and Dally stayed under the warm spray so long it started to go cold. His eyes were closed, one arm was braced against the wall, thoughts he didn’t want to think circling through his head over and over and over again until he lost track of time. Finally, he shut it off, the water becoming freezing. He stood in the shower for several more long minutes as he listened to the shower head drip into the porcelain tub.

He stepped out, wrapping a white towel around his slender middle.

He didn’t look in the mirror.

He went back to his room, throwing his towel on his bed before lighting himself another cigarette as he pulled on his jeans. He let it dangle from his lips as he pulled on a tshirt and his heavy leather jacket. He put it out before he left the house.

 _Where should I go?_ he thought, heading down the street, his shadow bouncing along the road in time with his steps.

He answered himself the way he always did.

_Find Johnny._

His stomach lurched as he thought it, a bad feeling settling into the pit of his stomach.

_Find Johnny._

It wasn’t an answer. Not really. It was a warning. A desperate plea.

_Find Johnny..._

The unspoken, unanswered second part to the statement rang loud and clear in his mind.

_...before it’s too late._

He couldn’t explain it, but Dally had always had a sixth sense when it came to Johnny being in danger. It went back to when they were children, to before he could remember. It was just a feeling that had always been there when something bad had happened to him.

He was headed out of the neighborhood, away from anywhere Johnny would most likely be.

He turned on his heel, heading in the direction his feet took him.

_Find Johnny._

He turned the corner, heading towards the lot.

_Find Johnny._

He stepped onto the grass of the lot.

_Find –_

Dally stopped short.

There was a body lying face down in the grass, blood covering the white shirt it was wearing.

His heart began to pound. He ran to the body, but he knew who it was before he saw the dark skin and the messy mop of dark hair, old grease still clinging to the ends. He knew who it was before he turned him over, his hands shaking so bad he could hardly move his fingers.

His breath caught in his throat. He pressed one hand over his mouth.

“Johnnycake...”

Johnny looked horrible.

Dally had seen Johnny beaten before. He’d seen him when he was jumped by the Socs four different times. He’d seen him after his father had gotten to him when he’d been extra angry, but this went beyond that. This was something else entirely.

He looked dead.

His face was cut up and bruised. There was a large bruise on his chin and another on his cheek. Another around his eye. His arms were cut up, but this was not the usual uniform cuts that Johnny gave himself. These were from something hitting him. It looked like the end of a belt buckle. His shirt was drenched in blood, the back of it more bloody than the rest and Dally was afraid of what he would see when he got the shirt off and saw what Johnny’s skin looked like beneath the fabric.

Dally pressed two shaking fingers to Johnny’s throat.

He let out a heavy sigh of relief when he felt the fluttering heartbeat there.

Swallowing hard, he gathered Johnny up in his arms and stood slowly. Johnny didn’t stir. The kid was out cold. Dally tried not to think about how long he might’ve been that way.

He couldn’t take him back to his place. His father could be home any minute.

He had to take him to the Curtis’s. They were closer anyway.

“Hold on, Johnnycake, I’m gonna get ya help.”

He kicked the Curtis’s front door when he reached it, shouting at the top of his lungs, “Someone answer the fucking door!”

Darry was the one that answered. He only got as far as opening his mouth to ask what was going on, but when he saw Johnny in Dally’s arms, his eyes widened, his lips pressed into a thin line and he swallowed hard. He stepped aside to let Dally into the house without saying anything.

“Darry who was –” Soda began, getting up from where he’d been sitting, eating his lunch in the dining room, but he stopped short, his eyes going even wider than Darry’s, his hands balling into shaking fists when he saw Johnny.

Two-Bit stood next to him, rooted to the spot, his eyes wide too, his beer bottle shaking from how badly his hands were trembling.

No one said anything for a long time, none of them, not even Dally, really knowing what to do.

“Take him into my room,” Darry said finally, pointing down the hall. “Soda, get the gauze bandages and the antiseptic in the bathroom. Two-Bit just...make sure Ponyboy doesn’t come in.”

No one had to ask why Darry didn’t want Ponyboy in the room. He was sensitive like Johnny was. Seeing his best friend so badly beaten he looked all but dead would give him trauma and nightmares that could last for weeks.

Dally set Johnny down on Darry’s bed. Johnny moaned as pressure was put on his ruined back. He turned on his side, curling in on himself. Dally jumped back as Johnny suddenly lurched forward and vomited several times over the side of the bed onto the bleached hardwood below.

He felt his heart clench in his chest. There was blood in the bile.

Darry noticed the blood, but said nothing. He got on the bed on Johnny’s other side and carefully rolled him on to his stomach. Johnny’s moaning stopped, but he didn’t go limp again. He was shaking violently now, his entire body breaking out into a sweat. Dally didn’t know what that meant, but he didn’t think it could’ve been anything good.

Darry lifted Johnny’s shirt off his back slowly.

He had to. Most of the fabric was stuck to his skin where the blood had drenched it, but as Darry removed it, Dally almost wished he hadn’t. The more he saw of Johnny’s back, the less he wanted to see it. The skin was ripped, torn to pieces and where it wasn’t shredded, it was bruised so bad that the skin was nearly as black as the spots of congealed blood.

“We have to take him to the hospital,” Dally said instantly. “He might need stitches. He could get an infection or somethin’.”

“We can’t do that,” Darry said quietly as Soda entered the bedroom with the gauze and antiseptic. “They’d ask what happenedta him. We could tell him he got jumped, but...they wouldn’t believe that. They’d know what those marks are from. They’d figure out it was his folks and...and if the investigation went wrong...if Johnny got sent backta them…”

Darry looked up at Dally.

He didn’t have to finish his sentence.

Everyone knew what would happen if there was an investigation into Johnny’s family and he didn’t get away from them.

His parents would kill him.

No one wanted to risk that.

Darry used the antiseptic first, pouring it onto a white towel and cleaning the wounds, simultaneously wiping away the dried and congealed blood on Johnny’s back. Johnny squirmed beneath his touch, moaning and crying and sometimes half screaming as the antiseptic set his back on fire. By the time Darry finished, the white towel had turned completely pink.

He used all of the large gauze patches in the box Soda handed him, covering Johnny’s back completely with them. In the end, it turned out he didn’t have enough of the large patches and had to cover the rest of his back with the medium sized ones. When he finished, he took of Johnny’s ruined shirt and put a fresh one on him.

He took off his bloodstained underwear next.

Dally didn’t watch as Darry cleaned up the mess between Johnny’s legs.

He was sure if he did, he’d break apart. Or kill Johnny’s father.

Maybe both.

“Okay,” Darry said.

Dally turned around again.

Johnny wore a fresh pair of boxers now too. He’d gone limp too, out cold again, but his sleep looked anything but peaceful. To Dallas, he still looked like a corpse.

“I’ll stay with him,” Dally said quietly, staring at Johnny’s limp form, lying on his stomach again, one arm dangling over to the side of the bed. There were a few gauze patches on his arm too and one on his face, covering the places where the belt had missed his back.

“Okay,” Darry said quietly. “If you want a break, we’ll be in the living room.”

Dally nodded, pulling up the chair from Darry’s desk and slumping in it. He wanted to light a cigarette and chain smoke until his head spun, but something about the whole situation made it feel wrong to smoke at all.

The door closed softly behind Darry and Dally wondered if Ponyboy would really be the only one that had nightmares about this later.

* * *

The first thing Johnny became aware of was that he was on his back and that it hurt, but when he tried to roll over onto his side or his stomach it hurt even more so he didn’t move at all. The second thing he became aware of was how bright it was in his room and for a minute he wondered if he was in the hospital, but when he blinking his eyes open a hand in front of them, trying to shield them from the light, he saw white lace drapes fluttering in the breeze, whitewashed walls and pictures hanging on them. There was a wooden desk in one corner.

It took him a moment to recognize the bedroom as Darry’s.

He’d woken up here many times over the years. He’d woken up here after he’d been beaten and left for dead in the lot by the Socs. He’d woken up here more than once after he’d tried to kill himself when Dallas had been gone to New York. He’d woken up here after his first, second, and third concussions. His father gave him two of them. The Socs gave him the third.

It had become a sort of sickroom of his – and of the gang’s too, frankly – when something bad happened. He always felt guilty for using it. The Curtis’s only had so many rooms with beds in their house and Darry usually had to take the couch when Johnny took his bed. Johnny felt Darry needed the bed more than he did when he had to work a dangerous job to help pay for himself and his brothers to be able to continue living together and keep the house they’d grown up in.

It took him a moment more to realize why he would have to be there now.

It came back to him slowly in flashes.

_The belt sliding off._

_The pain in his face. His arms. His back. His back. His back._

_The pain between his legs after._

_Dropping out of his window._

_Feeling nothing nothing nothing._

_Running to the lot._

_Feeling nothing nothing nothing._

_His knees buckling._

_Darkness._

That’s why he was here.

“Hey Johnnycake.”

The voice startled him and Johnny blinked, turning in its direction.

Dally sat on what must have been the chair that belonged to the desk, smoking, looking dead.

“Dallas,” he said.

“You feelin’ okay, kid?” he asked, not looking at him.

Johnny swallowed hard. “My back hurts, but...I think I’m better...than I was.”

Dally only nodded once.

He lit another cigarette, tilting his head back blowing smoke at the ceiling.

The breeze from outside blew the smoke away before it could reach it.

Johnny swallowed again. “I musta been out for hours,” he said, smiling, trying to make Dally smile too, but even as he said that he knew that was the wrong thing to say.

Dally tilted his head back down slowly. He took the cigarette out of his mouth just as slowly.

This time Dally did look him, right in the eyes.

His voice was as flat and dead as his eyes when he spoke.

“Try days, Johnnycake.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did u catch the metaphor for his back burnin'?? anyway i hope ya enjoyed this!! i'll tryta get chapter 3 up soon and work on some of my requests and other fic chapters at the same time!!


End file.
